


Trouble Never Comes Alone

by element78



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Gen, May be continued, everything i know about the art world i learned from watching white collar, modern AU for U.N.C.L.E., spies being spies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 12:49:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8752084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/element78/pseuds/element78
Summary: A search for an arms dealer leads U.N.C.L.E. to Gotham- and straight to Bruce Wayne.





	

**Author's Note:**

> An expanded version of the kinkmeme fill, on account of the fact that my response came in about six hundred characters over the comment limit and I chose to do a bit of pruning rather than post a second comment with fifty more words in it. I sincerely apologize for the lack of anything actually happening within this fic, and I hope to remedy that soon with a continuation. I just need to, y'know, work out an actual plot first.

The hallway outside the Gotham City Police Commissioner’s office is long and echoing and empty of any potential distractions, save for a coffee pot on a folding table and a poster on the wall directly opposite the office door. The coffee is thick and tarry and does not appeal, and the poster features only a few lines of text under a picture of a woman with bruises on her face. All in all, it seems mostly as though the Commissioner’s intent is to bore his visitors into leaving before he has to deal with them.

Illya reads the text on the poster and memorizes the hotline phone numbers. He counts the packets of creamer and sugar in their little plastic bowls on the coffee table. He does not touch anything, does not take any coffee for himself- DNA trace on coffee cups, _you can take the boy out of the SVR_ , Solo had once said, except you really, really can’t- but simply waits. He has nowhere else he would rather be.

There is a noise at the far end of the hallway and Illya pauses in his fifth recounting of creamer tubs. He watches as a man approaches- wide-brimmed hat with his head down, trim white mustache, shiny-toed shoes. He stops outside the office and takes his hat off, shaking the rain off its brim.

“Agent Nabokov?” he asks, slightly disbelieving, and Illya can feel his entire face twitch before he forces himself to stillness. Apparently Waverly is mad at them for interrupting his weekend.

“Yes,” he says, and pulls the badge out of his pocket again. This one predates his recruitment into UNCLE, and is the closest to authentic of all the badges he carries. Commissioner Gordon spares it barely a glance as he removes a keyring from his coat pocket and unlocks his office door.

“So you’re Interpol,” he says as he leads Illya in. The hat and the coat go on the coat rack just inside the office door, and Gordon turns, sweeping a quick glance over Illya. “I would have thought I’d have known if Interpol was working on something in my town,” he says mildly.

“With respect, I am not here to explain myself to you,” Illya says.

“Of course not,” Gordon agrees. “You’re here for our prisoner. He’s a… consultant? Is that correct?”

“He is useful,” Illya allows, and it even manages to be mostly true.

“He tried to steal something from a benefit,” Gordon says, and looks Illya over again. “A charity auction, to be precise, although I’m sure you knew that.”

He had left the tie and jacket in the car, had unbuttoned the top two buttons on his shirt and rolled the sleeves up his forearms- but he is still wearing most of a thousand-dollar suit, and of course Gordon’s trained eye would pick up on that. “Yes, I was there.”

“You’re Russian, right?” Gordon asks, and when Illya dips his chin in a single nod, he nods as well. “You probably don’t know what the Widows and Orphans Fund is, then.”

Illya thinks briefly of the police officers at the party, all awkwardly wearing dress uniforms, chugging champagne from the tiny glasses like they were beer steins. Gordon himself is in a suit, although not nearly as expensive as the one Solo and Gaby had forced Illya into. He doesn’t know for sure, no, but he can guess.

“For officers fallen in the line of duty, yes?” he asks, and Gordon sends him a sharp look. “If you are saying he ought to be in jail, I agree.”

“I’m saying I don’t want him walking free just because he’s _useful_ ,” Gordon snaps.

Illya doesn’t know what to say to that, and thankfully doesn’t have to try. There is a noise in the hallway, footsteps, the tiniest clink of a chain, and Illya turns to find an officer standing in the doorway, looking apologetic. Next to him is Napoleon Solo, face bloodied and bruised, hands cuffed behind his back, suit rumpled and bloodstained, but alive and relatively well. He relaxes a little at seeing Illya, but wisely says nothing.

“Sir,” the officer begins, holding out a clipboard with a stack of forms on it to Gordon.

Illya steps aside, steps back, takes Solo by the elbow and pushes him back out into the hallway to give the two policemen privacy. Solo angles his head enough to look up at him without seeming to actually be looking.

“Peril,” he greets quietly. Not subdued- Illya would not expect that, not even after all this. Illya looks him over coolly, expression purely professional, a workman inspecting his tools for damage.

“You look like battered woman poster,” he says, and Solo blinks at him and looks around behind when Illya nods towards the poster in question. He turns back with a sneer and a roll of his eyes.

“Charming,” he growls, and starts to say something else, but Illya squeezes his arm when he sees movement in the office.

“Seems everything is in order,” Gordon says as he steps out of his office, reluctant and unhappy, the words dragging out of him. “You’ll need to sign this, and we need a phone number and the hotel you’re staying at, if you don’t mind.”

Illya signs the paper with his insult of an alias and writes down one of the hotline numbers from the battered woman poster, changing the last two digits so it isn’t immediately apparent he’s lying. He also writes the name of a hotel he had seen while driving through the city, then lets the pen go unhappily, thinking of all the interesting things that will come up in their system if they try to run his prints.

“Was it worth it?” Gordon asks Solo while Illya is busy writing.

“For the opportunity to meet the Bat? Absolutely,” Solo says, bright and chipper as ever.

“Be quiet,” Illya orders. Gordon already thinks Solo was trying to steal from dead police officers, and will be even unhappier with them when he inevitably sends someone to the hotel to talk to them, or tries to call the number Illya gave him. Openly antagonizing him won’t do them any favors.

Gordon takes the paper with a polite murmur of thanks, and looks Illya in the eye as he promises, “I’ll have someone drop by the hotel later to see how everything’s going.”

Illya holds Gordon’s gaze and gives a somber nod. He was expecting nothing less. “Until then,” he says, and takes Solo by the elbow again and steers him away, leaving Gordon and the other officer behind.

It is still raining outside- it is always raining in Gotham, Illya thinks, the sky always choked with clouds turned the colors of bruises with smog and light pollution- and Solo ducks his head and grimaces as Illya grimly hauls him out of the police headquarters. He has been behaving so far, and Illya is counting the seconds before-

“So. Nabokov?”

\- before that happens. Illya stifles a sigh. “This is your fault,” he says, without heat. Scolding Solo for these stunts of his is like scolding water for being wet. It is his nature.

“Waverly’s mad at us, I take it,” Solo continues, happy enough now that he no longer has to put on an act for the police.

Illya stops them at their rented car and unlocks the doors, opens the passenger’s door and digs into the glove box for a moment. He comes up with a paperclip, which he unfolds and drops into Solo’s waiting hands. “You met the Bat?” he asks as Solo fumbles the wire into place against the handcuff lock. “You said he was not real. Urban legend.”

“I stand very much corrected,” Solo says, and grunts as he twists his wrist oddly. One loop of the handcuffs spring open and he immediately draws his hands around in front, rubbing at his wrists. “He is extremely real. Is there any way we can stop by a hospital? I think he broke my nose.”

“You’re fine,” Illya says, mostly by reflex. His nose does look bad. Perhaps if he had seen Solo a couple of hours ago, when the wound was still fresh and the swelling had not had time to set in, he could say for sure if it was broken or not.

“Is Gaby still at the benefit?” Solo asks as Illya circles around to the driver’s side and climbs into the car. He gets in as well, although he leaves his door open and one leg outside of the car while he picks the other loop of the handcuff. Illya takes advantage of the pause to lean into the backseat and retrieve his suit jacket, then produces a spare earpiece from an inner pocket and offers it to Solo. The cowboy tosses the handcuffs into the backseat and takes the earpiece, tucking it into his ear. “Is Gaby still at the benefit?” he repeats, this time for all three of them to hear.

Illya taps his own earpiece to activate it- no sense in distracting Gaby with making her listen to Illya fight through bureaucracy- just in time to hear Gaby give a fake, tinkling laugh. She says something in German, and the person she is talking to must not be anywhere approaching fluent, because those words would shock a drunken sailor.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Solo says wryly. “Is there any way you could get your hands on a guest list?”

There is a pause while Gaby excuses herself from whomever she is talking to. Illya starts the car and lets it roll forward a little, forcing Solo to pull his leg into the car and shut the door.

“Guest list, sure,” Gaby says, keeping her voice low and her words clipped short, trying not to attract attention. “Why?”

“Has our Mister Dupree graced us with his presence yet?” Solo presses, ignoring Gaby’s irritated huff. She answers, of course, because experience has long shown there is little point in fighting with Solo when he’s in one of these moods.

“Not yet, and I don’t think he’s coming at all, with how late it is.”

“You notice who else never showed up? And after he sponsored and organized the whole benefit, too,” Solo continues. “Very rude.”

“If you’re meaning Bruce Wayne, you’d better bite your tongue, because he’s here,” Gaby says. “He showed up about ten minutes after Illya left. Fashionably late and all that. He’s been making the rounds- he even flirted with me for a few minutes.”

“Oh.” Solo looks briefly disappointed. After a moment, he slants Illya a sharp grin. “Well, that just means there’s no one home to bother us when we go break into his house.”

“No,” Illya says, although he knows it’s already a lost battle. 

“Why?” Gaby adds. “Solo, what is going on?”

Solo fetches Illya’s discarded suit jacket from the backseat and takes that stupid little silk square out of the pocket. He dabs it against his nose, checking for fresh bleeding.

“I wasn’t stealing the painting,” he says. “I was just trying to get a closer look at it.”

“You were in restricted area,” Illya points out. He blames himself for this- being surrounded by such art, for Solo, must have been like a child in a sweets shop. Illya should have known to keep closer watch on him.

“Professional curiosity,” Solo says airily, and Gaby gives an unlady-like snort. “I am offended that you both think so little of my skill-” Solo begins.

The street out of the police headquarters empties into a major intersection. Illya turns left against a newly-red light, weaving ably through the first few cars already crossing the intersection. He leaves a trail of honking horns and squealing brakes in his wake- American drivers are so timid, so scared of even the tiniest of bumps and scratches. It shuts Solo up, at least, as he squeezes his eyes shut and braces himself against the doorframe.

“Oh, is Illya driving?” Gaby asks, sounding almost sympathetic.

“God save us all from Russian motorists,” Solo agrees.

“Talk, Cowboy,” Illya orders, and actually stops for the next light, even though it is only yellow. “Keep it short.”

“I noticed that several of the high-end paintings at the benefit were forgeries,” Solo says, leaving aside the self-aggrandizing. “Including the Matisse I was looking at. Three guesses who donated every single one of them.”

“Bruce Wayne,” Illya says, because he can see where this is going.

“Now, it could be something completely innocent,” Solo says. “It could be a genuine mistake. He donated a lot of things at the auction, and only a few pieces were forgeries, so maybe he just never noticed. It could also be that he bought them, realized they were forgeries, and is using the benefit to get them off his hands without public embarrassment. Who is going to accuse a philanthropist of donating forgeries to a charity auction? Or…” And he trails off, clearly waiting for some prompting from his audience.

The light for the left turn lane changes to green, although Illya’s light stays red. He floors it anyway, ripping through the intersection with a roar of the engine. Solo slams back into his seat and swears, but once they’re through the intersection, he starts talking again, words coming out rushed and choppy.

“We were at the benefit in the first place because our mystery arms dealer Dupree was supposed to be there, correct?” he asks, and continues before Illya can break any more traffic laws. “And after three months of hunting him, we still haven’t so much as laid eyes on him, and only have a very basic description of him. What if that’s because he doesn’t actually exist?”

“You think Dupree is an alias?” Gaby asks. “For _Bruce Wayne_? Solo, I’ve met the man. He’s a total idiot.”

“He has run giant corporation for twenty years,” Illya points out, because far more than Solo or Gaby, he understands what it is to hide behind stereotypes.

“True,” Gaby concedes. “Still, it’s a stretch to go from forged paintings to arms dealing.”

“Works of art are currency on the black market,” Solo says. “Easier and more convenient than laundering money. Donate a forgery to a charity auction and no one asks what happened to the Matisse that used to be hanging on your wall. Also, the Bat was there. That alone says something’s not right.” And he dabs at his nose again with the silk square, prim and tidy.

There is silence between the three of them, Gaby and Illya stewing over Solo’s words, Solo smug and satisfied. Finally Illya sighs.

“Is Wayne still at the party?” he asks.

“Yeah, and it looks like he’s here to stay,” Gaby says. “He has a woman on each arm and he’s two-handing the champagne.”

“Where is Wayne’s house?” Illya asks Solo.

“South of the city,” Solo says. “I’ve scouted the place a couple times. Wayne Manor burned down a while ago, so Wayne lives in a lakehouse on the property. It’s minimal security. Plus the only staff he’s got is an old butler who takes off on nights like this.”

“Exactly how many times have you scouted it?” Gaby asks. “And you never told me why you want the guest list.”

"I want to see if there’s someone named Kent on it. The Bat called me Kent, asked me what the hell I thought I was doing. Then he realized I wasn’t who he thought I was and broke my nose.”

“Is not broken,” Illya says, more confident in his diagnosis now- Solo is not nearly in enough pain for a broken nose. 

“I’ll wait for a professional’s opinion, thank you,” Solo counters, and this- it is a game, between the two of them, this one-upmanship. Solo will never simply take Illya’s word on it, not now. Illya rolls his eyes and resigns himself to a visit to the hospital in the near future.

“You want to find this Kent?” Illya asks, to change the subject.

“I want to know who he is, yes,” Solo says. “It’s not important, I’m just curious.”

Illya does not for a second believe that, but he knows Solo will not tell him, no matter how he asks. “If Wayne leaves the party, tell us,” he says to Gaby, gentling his voice just enough that it isn’t an order.

“Let me know if you find anything interesting,” Gaby says with a resigned sigh- she has long since learned that there is no helping it when the boys are set on a course she thinks is stupid. Then she says hello to someone in her socialite voice, and turns her earpiece off with a click.

“Lakehouse,” Solo says, almost to himself. “Shouldn’t take long, it’s got maybe five rooms. Then hospital, and call Waverly and see what he knows about Bruce Wayne.”

“Wayne is rich,” Illya points out. “Why sell weapons?”

“Boredom, maybe,” Solo shrugs. “The idle rich want only for something to fill their empty hours. He’s got to be doing something with his time, something a bit more thrilling than drinking and sleeping with everything that moves.”

Illya only grunts. Solo speaks from experience- he has actually _been_ the idle rich, after establishing himself as a master thief. His own search for thrills, his need for mental stimulation, is what ultimately got him caught.

“Oh,” Solo adds, “and let’s try to avoid the Bat from now on. He makes you seem downright cuddly.”

“Should be easy enough,” Illya agrees.

Then he ends the conversation by blowing through another red light, Solo swearing loudly beside him, and they roll on into the Gotham night.


End file.
